UAPremierGuy

so was nobody on this flight from the FT community?

fastair

Usually they fly over at least once for visual confirmation of whatever is wrong (i.e. a landing gear not down) unless the emergency is so severe that they cannot wait for that or it is not possible (i.e. Sioux City.)

dliesse

Actually, those of us who worked for the airline at the time remember it pretty well, too! One of my coworkers was best friends with the pilot riding as a passenger who came forward to help. Another had the maintenance records locked in the data base before most of even knew anything had happened.

kcvt750

I agree with other posters. This is EXACTLY why I fly UA. Everything else is just noise.

^

BOOMER339

Question for AD, axl, or whomever. The photo from airliners.net shows the gear hung-up on the door. When everything works as intended, does the door open and gear drop at a specified rate, using hydraulic mechanisms, so that the gear clears the door with a predetermined minimum clearance, or is it sequenced, allowing the gear to drop and lock only after the door reaches the fully open position?

aluminumdriver

As Axl correctly stated, United, as well as many airlines, have gone to flying with the minimum legal fuel load now so as to save $$. Unfortunately, that 45 min of extra gas is computed at 25,000' at long range cruise speed, not down low to the ground with gear extended working a problem. That 45 min goes to 15 min, so not a lot of time to work checklists, talk with maintenance, prepare the cabin, set up for an approach and land. It really compresses the timeframe. It can take 10 min to just run the emergency gear verification and extension checklists where we crank the gear down. That's why 99% of the pilots actually add some extra fuel each flight, just for the "what-ifs" like this.

Actually, we unlock the doors and let the gear fall into position via gravity, not really cranking them down like in the old B-17.

Normally they are extended and retracted hydraulically and via actuators. They are timed so that an acuator opens the gear door, once it is open the deploy actuator comes on and deploys the gear, and once that is down and locked another actuator brings the gear doors back up. If you have a hangup in the system, you can try and reset it by cycling the gear handle, and after that you can manually lower the gear by manually unlocking the gear doors and hopefully the gear comes down by gravity. However, if the gear door is jammed up for some reason, or you can't get the hydraulic pressure to come off the door for some reason, it can get stuck closed and thus the gear can't come down, as in this case.

AD

28isGreat

I don't want to play Monday morning quarterback, but AF 358 certainly shows that a quick evacuation can be a very good thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_358).

I have absolutely no idea what guidance crews are given in these cases... but I imagine that if there's any doubt about the safety of remaining on board, slide evacuation is the way to go. The risk of remaining on board until an extreme situation presents itself is likely a lot higher than the risk of relatively minor injuries that would be expected from the slides.

DenverBrian

^^^ And if I might add, UA went through the entire decade of the 2000s without a fatality, and I believe since 1991 with only one fatality due to clear air turbulence. UA is one safe airline.

9/11 of course cannot count against UA for its superb safety record.

why fly

Well i guess UA has one less narrow body for a while.

HaeMaker

Am I correct in saying the captain has the final say on the amount of fuel carried on the flight? (within reason)

flavorflav

Not to veer too far OT, but Iowans not only know "Flight 232" but can tell you where they were when they heard the news. I was in high school, cutting someone's grass on Ingersoll Avenue. While it was the worst transportation disaster in Iowa history in terms of lives lost -- 112 dead -- 189 survived. It still makes me proud to be an Iowan and proud to be associated with UA, even as a lowly leisure passenger.

If you have time, the transcript of a lengthy -- but mesmerizing -- speech by Capt. Al Haynes about Flight 232

Kudos to the crew at EWR.

LarryJ

The Captain and dispatcher must agree on the fuel load. Neither can change it without the agreement of the other and the flight can't leave until they agree.

kenhawk

Wow - that is an amazing photo! I always imagined that the RAT (ram air turbine) would be located near the nose...very interesting.

kenhawk

This incident is another example of the excellent training and experience that UA mainline pilots have. It is the main reason that I have continued to fly UA since 1985 and will continue to do so. Congrats to the crew of 634 for the excellent landing and evacuation! ^

ljwobker

My guess is, there's a tradeoff between burning off fuel to reduce fire hazard and getting the plane on the ground sooner rather than later. My father is a retired US pilot (flew 737s for 30 years) and says that in a situation like this it's PROBABLY more about talking to ATC and getting the plane and passengers ready and checklist operations as opposed to burning off fuel.

Random musings on fuel dumping:
I know that newer 767s (-400s and I *believe* -300s) can dump fuel, not sure about the older ones. You can very easily see the fuel dump valve on the rear of the wing at least on CO 767-400s. Virtually every large widebody allows fuel dumping. The requirement for fuel dumping is essentially driven by the difference between the Max Take-off Weight (MTOW) and the max landing weight (MLW) of the aircraft.

On something like an A319, the difference is only around 7000lbs, which you would burn most of just to taxi out and get the thing off the ground... so you don't really HAVE to have the capability to dump fuel.

However, if you look at something like a 747-400, you're talking about an airplane that can take off at 200,000 pounds heavier than it can land... so when you have a major emergency just after taking off with a full load from LAX-SYD, you've got to have some way to lose a LOT of weight quickly. ;-)